


On Impermanence: Faith

by viggorlijah



Series: On Impermanence [7]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 07:25:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viggorlijah/pseuds/viggorlijah





	On Impermanence: Faith

_If we lived forever, if the dews of Adashino never vanished, if the crematory smoke on Toribeyama never faded, men would hardly feel the pity of things. The beauty of life is in its impermanence. Man lives the longest of all living things... and even one year lived peacefully seems very long. Yet for such as love the world, a thousand years would fade like the dream of one night."_

_Kenko Yoshida, Essays in Idleness (1330-1332)_

 

* * *

Bells ring and Faith thinks "Vespers." It's a private joke. Angel smiled when she told him, the sudden sweetness of it silencing her for a moment. She'd reached out and traced his lips and then - she shakes her head. Not the right time to be thinking about that. She's learnt to be disciplined. Pure of mind and spirit, if not body, here in the Penal Institute for Women.

Bells ring again, and down the corridor she can hear footsteps. Off to chapel. Exercise rooms and the library, really, but it's all ritual. Guards instead of priests, solitary confinement instead of self-flagellation. Novices and mother superiors, exiles seeking a state of grace. She likes that expression. Whispers it to herself. A state of grace, that's what she hopes to find in this nunnery. Along with her Angel.

Not surprisingly, he has a thing for convents, so she now has a stack of Catholic histories on her bookshelf. An old rosary that he taught her how to use. Click clack of the beads when she's trying to calm down, looking at her little sandalwood buddha, the seashells and the photographs. Cordelia, Wesley. Lindsey and Darla, for Angel. Candle for Finch, another for Lee. Mary Suzkin, the woman she left in critical at the hospital. All the others. Light the candles, sit and pray every night. One unlit. She hasn't forgiven Buffy yet.

She lets her mind wander while she moves through her tai-chi. Lets it go back while her arms flow through the air. Buffy with the sunlight in her hair. Dancing, hands slipping all over. Swaying in the Bronze bathroom, pushing their way into a stall, up against the wall. Effortlessly holding each other up, and really, who else can a Slayer screw but another Slayer? Or a vamp with a soul. Nothing human can keep up with them. She heard about Riley from Wolfram & Hart. Offered the info to Angel and didn't see him for two weeks. So she keeps that to herself, turns it over in her head while she's exercising. As much of a Slayer as the military could create, and still, she bets, still not enough for her B.

No-one's enough for her B. Abruptly her leg begins to shake and she halts. Ungainly, awkwardly frozen with her arms above her head, her legs half-crooked. She wants to hit something so she forces herself to breathe. In, out. In, out. Finish the pose. Bend, bow, release.

Guard's been waiting while she worked out. It's Johnny, the guy with way too much cheer for jail. Probably helps that she's wearing nothing but her underwear for this. He pushes himself up from the wall he's been leaning on, slots the mail through the bars. "Parcel of books getting checked. Want some cigarettes?"

She nods and he slides a pack on top of her mail. With a lighter. How thoughtful. "How much they paying you, Johnny?" He laughs and she grins. "Not enough, eh." Lindsey's got to justify his expenses. So she doesn't get satellite, but hell, it's the little touches. She can see Lindsey writing a memo on that. He's the kind of man who doesn't need a woman to tell him what flowers to get. Pot of marigolds, little earrings in her birthstone. Notes of encouragement, a new CD every now and then. Aside from being evil, he's pretty damn sweet.

She lights two and passes one to Johnny. Sorts through her mail while she listens to the prison gossip. Fatal knifing in Block D. Another werewolf being brought in. Damn commission investigating corruption. Drugs are getting worse, someone managed to smuggle in crack. She shakes her head when he offers her some. St John's Wort is about as doped as she gets these days.

Mail's good. A letter from Joyce, full of photographs. Sunnydale newspapers, a week's worth bundled up. A postcards from a half-demon who was in the cell across from her. Elly's made it to Texas, ends it with a wish-you-were-here. Copy of the secret memo Wesley sends to the Watcher's Council, which she then hands over to Angel. Note from Lindsey, a Dilbert strip on lawyers clipped to it.

Bells ring again and she waves bye to Johnny. She's picked up the social graces, even learnt to eat with a knife and fork. Knives and forks, the whole fucking spread on white linen. Birthday treat from Lindsey. Had to resist the temptation to stab Lilah who smirked when she fumbled with the damn lobster clips. Sitting in an empty cell with catering staff running in and out, candles hiding the graffiti on the walls, Brahms playing softly. Nice. It'd been a nice way to turn twenty. Better than B.'s, which had left her gasping for breath, laughing as hard as Lindsey who'd snorted champagne out of his nose, and that had left the two of them sprawled on the floor, Lilah stiff-lipped. Lindsey kissing her goodbye, and she'd whispered "Angel came by", slipped his hand down her skirt to where she was still wet, still Angel. Lilah scowling at them, unable to figure out why Lindsey was licking his fingers. Stupid bitch.

Peace, she reminded herself. Everyone's worth something. Lilah's probably got inner qualities. Not just a vapid, petty cow.

She's working on it.

Every day, she wakes up, Cell 43, Special Units, Block F, St Belle Vue Penal Institution for Women, California. Prisoner WX8742. Wakes up and thinks, is this the day I choose?

A phone call to Wolfram & Hart. To Angel Investigations.

Some days, she thinks she'll just bend the bars back and walk out. She's pretty sure she's strong enough. Walk out and walk away from L.A.. Do a Wes and be a Rogue Demon Hunter. She daydreams about him forgiving her, the two of them riding off into the sunset, dressed in matching leather. Watcher and Slayer, the way they were meant to be.

Or she could catch a bus back to Sunnydale. Find B., and she has no idea what would happen after that.

So no phone call. No breaking out.

Angel comes to visit and sometimes they make out. Sometimes he comes in still filthy and bloody from fighting. Wound tight and battle hungry, smiling the same bright manic grin that fooled her once. Angelus just below the surface, aching to break out. Biting and fist-fucking and breaking everything in her cell as they fuck and fight.

Sometimes, he lies next to her on her bunk and he doesn't talk. Just kisses her. She can talk about B. then, and the words she wants to say to her come stammering out. Angel listens and tells her at the end that she's not ready. He wants her back out there, another Slayer tilting the balance, but she's not ready.

She's not ready and the days slip by. She thinks about killing herself, calling the next Slayer, someone better but she's afraid it won't work, that she'll leave B. all alone.

She finishes her cigarette, puts the mail aside for after dinner. Stretches and begins the tai-chi again. Lets her mind drift. Back to Sunnydale, back to B.. Angel and the way he wept last time he came. The damn vase on her altar, the candle she lights grudgingly. Holds her position, and for a moment, she's floating, serene and quiet.

She'll pray over Darla's soul tonight.

Pray for her own.

She wants to die in a state of grace.


End file.
